Law & Apple: Tricks or Treats from Patent Trolls and Spooked Moms

Well, it is Halloween, and the patent trolls are trick-or-treating in Cupertino. A Texas based company is looking to get a bag of cash treats from Apple because of a patent dispute, and a woman and her son from Canada are spooked because, she claims in a class-action suit, Apple is stalking them.

Sometimes, we suspect, Cupertino lawyers probably wish they were allowed to just turn out the lights and not answer the door.

ICC vs. Apple

Patently Apple is reporting that Intercarrier Communications (ICC) has got themselves a big pumpkin-sized patent, and they going door-to-door in the tech neighborhood trying to score some candy. Their latest stop, after opening up lawsuits against several companies including MobiWeb, Inerop Technologies, BroadSoft, and Iris Wireless, is to creep up on Apple.

The patent in question, #6,985,748 deals with a way to provide "Inter-Carrier messaging service providing phone number only experience," and was acquired by ICC for no reason except to sue other companies and scare them into writing checks. ICC claims in their lawsuit that Apple's Messages and FaceTime apps, in both iOS and OS X, infringe on this patent, and wants Cupertino to pay up.

And what are you dressed up as?

If you are playing along at home, acquiring patents for no purpose but to sue other companies gets you the label of patent troll. It is one thing for a company that invests millions of dollars in research and development to want to protect their intellectual property in court, and something else entirely when a handful of suits in a cheap little Texas business park scoop up some patents to get paid.

If the patent is valid and stands up in court, Apple and the other companies will have to hand over some bags of cash. But if ICC is just hoping that Cupertino writes them check without a fight, well, Apple's legal department doesn't scare quite that easily.

Amanda Ladas vs. Apple

According to HuffPost, a B.C. woman is suing Apple for breach of privacy and security rights. Amanda Ladas claims that her and her son's rights were violated when Apple began tracking and storing their movements via several iOS devices.

In 2010, Ladas and her son were each given an iPod touch, and later in the year Ladas acquired an iPhone 4; all three of the devices were running iOS 4. According to the lawsuit, iOS 4 devices allegedly track, time stamp, and store user's geographic location in a hidden, yet unencrypted and unprotected, file on the device. The suit claims that access to the information is easily accessible by any type of creepy person, and even includes a sworn affidavit by geographic profiler that details the spooky ways the information could be used against someone.

They could be watching me right now...

None of the claims have been proven yet in court, and Apple has not issued a formal response to the suit. The class action purports to represent an estimated two to seven million users of iOS devices running iOS 4 in Canada. Is this some really reckless software from Apple that puts users at risk, or is Ladas hiding behind the mask of public safety trying to score some sweet cash from Cupertino?